Tag: review

for all those who cannot see the beauty behind the depths of archetypes, I, gladly, analyze (in-depth) the archetypes in the poem “Struggle for Survival”. I often revieve comments that my poems are too “deep”, whatever that means.
I find it a pleasure to analyze my poems this way.
for those for whom it’s not too huge, grasp it, enjoy it, fellows!

in 40 minutes I explore the true identity of the woman in the poem Who is she? Who is not… – through the book of Revelation, comparisons of Buddhist female deities, lists of victims of rape in antiquity, and much more.

At the outset, the poetess addresses the readers with a clarification that her lyrics aretruth sang of stone. Starting the path that Poetess set out on us, I was convinced of the veracity of her speech. Ending the companionship, travelling with her verses, as if I held in my hand neither paper nor stone but Prism. And not a glass prism, but a diamond, and a diamond is a stone in its hardest form.

The Leila Samarrai’s verses possess the smoothness of Prism, in the sense of perfection of style and language, where the smallest and most careless linguistic error, or punctuation error, becomes milstone. The poetess, therefore, does not have this stumbling block. It’s about the exterior of the Prism. The interior of the Prism is characterized by the sheer splendour of wisdom in these verses, which resembles the splendour of colour in the Prism, that occurs when the Light is immersed in the Prism, and that Light is an individual experience of what the poetess offers to the readers. Leila Samarrai sings about Being and Non-Being in each one of us, about our Realistic and Impossible Aspirations, which the poetess calls Bloom / Flower of Flight / of Summer. (a pun in Serbian – meaning: depending on the accentuation)

Through the Prism of Leila’s verses, Beauties, Commandments and Wars are intertwined. Consequently, these verses become timeless or more timeless. And more than that. The proof is that when the top-notch poems are before us, it becomes irrelevant whether they are written by a poet or a poetess.

It is a confirmation that the Mind of the Absolute inspires and rains on only The Chosen Ones. It showers them by the Truth of the Stone, the Truth of the Prism, the Truth of the Diamonds, Undoubtedly, Leila Samarrai is – the Chosen One. Therefore, it is not surprising that she has titled her book with Darkness.

Leila’s poems are directed against the darkness in us, so even the most stubborn Dark will understand them and will withdraw before the rush of Light and Spectrum that erupts from every verse of our Poetess.

I am opposed to writing reviews for any and all accomplishments, because ‘different strokes for different folks.’ We are all subjective. And more subjective make it objective. Therefore, if no one is behind anyone’s judgment, or there are a few, no matter how much the work deserves all the attention, unfortunately, it remains sideward/on both sides.

After reading ‘THE SECOND BIRTH OF TRAGEDY’, by Leila Samarrai, I may be lonely in my impressions – the impressions, or the assessment that the author restores to us the belief in the existence and flowering of true literature and true language, at this time of ‘fostering false language’, and false literature . At this time of existence of ‘apocalyptic wonderful wonders’, which self-proclaimed artists do not see because they do not want to see, or, even more scary, they are not capable of seeing, they suffer from the’ willful blindness”, as soon as they are concerned with subjects and personalities whose place is on the flea market and not in the arts.

Hence, Leila Samarrai says: My Hell is not here! Her Hell is not shallow, her Hell is deep, the real one, in and around us, called Life Without Mask, Life Without Lies and Lacquers, before which most eyes remain closed, the window shutters down, following us from time indefinite to time indefinite, from the creation of man, regardless whether man is the work of the hands of God, or the work of the hands of the Aliens, or a mutant of the crossing of homo sapiens and asteroid angels.

Ancient artists told us about this Hell. The living waters of their living words, and living themes, also flowed in Dante Alighieri, then in Paul Verlaine, Thomas Elliott There is a real deal of Hell in our Poetess who was tempering, hardening, toughening-up and annealing herself in true Hell, she does not run away from Hell into chants and playful ones masquerade balls of self-proclaimed artists, followed by the glamour and kitsch.

They are not her company either, because, she was hanging with Euripides, Aristophanes, Ovidius, Sophocles, Dante, Verlaine, Eliott…
The poetess tells us, in the “Second Birth of Tragedy’, through the form of ancient dramas and through the way of singing by modernist “cursed poets”, about us, the diffident sort of beasts. about our Black Eros, about our Scream and Whisper, about Shackled wood, about Astray Course Spheres, our Exchange of poison, about Frozen heights, and for one purpose: For There and Here, for Now, and Never. – In the meaning of biblical ‘self-purification and self-repentance’, because this is the only way to achieve profanity, it has been emphasized for centuries: Love your neighbour as you love yourself.
And finally, the impression remains that Leila’s emergence, the emergence of blossoms at the midden of our new literature, where it doesn’t belong, but there is also the hope that there will be more flowers like this and that they will cover the ugly midden that degrades and destroys our all-around spirituality.

At the outset, the poetess addresses the readers with a clarification that her lyrics aretruth sang of stone. Starting the path that Poetess set out on us, I was convinced of the veracity of her speech. Ending the companionship, travelling with her verses, as if I held in my hand neither paper nor stone but Prism. And not a glass prism, but a diamond, and a diamond is a stone in its hardest form.

The Leila Samarrai’s verses possess the smoothness of Prism, in the sense of perfection of style and language, where the smallest and most careless linguistic error, or punctuation error, becomes milstone. The poetess, therefore, does not have this stumbling block. It’s about the exterior of the Prism. The interior of the Prism is characterized by the sheer splendour of wisdom in these verses, which resembles the splendour of colour in the Prism, that occurs when the Light is immersed in the Prism, and that Light is an individual experience of what the poetess offers to the readers. Leila Samarrai sings about Being and Non-Being in each one of us, about our Realistic and Impossible Aspirations, which the poetess calls Bloom / Flower of Flight / of Summer. (a pun in Serbian – meaning: depending on the accentuation)

Through the Prism of Leila’s verses, Beauties, Commandments and Wars are intertwined. Consequently, these verses become timeless or more timeless. And more than that. The proof is that when the top-notch poems are before us, it becomes irrelevant whether they are written by a poet or a poetess.

It is a confirmation that the Mind of the Absolute inspires and rains on only The Chosen Ones. It showers them by the Truth of the Stone, the Truth of the Prism, the Truth of the Diamonds, Undoubtedly, Leila Samarrai is – the Chosen One. Therefore, it is not surprising that she has titled her book with Darkness.

Leila’s poems are directed against the darkness in us, so even the most stubborn Dark will understand them and will withdraw before the rush of Light and Spectrum that erupts from every verse of our Poetess.

I am opposed to writing reviews for any and all accomplishments, because ‘different strokes for different folks.’ We are all subjective. And more subjective make it objective. Therefore, if no one is behind anyone’s judgment, or there are a few, no matter how much the work deserves all the attention, unfortunately, it remains sideward/on both sides.

After reading ‘THE SECOND BIRTH OF TRAGEDY’, by Leila Samarrai, I may be lonely in my impressions – the impressions, or the assessment that the author restores to us the belief in the existence and flowering of true literature and true language, at this time of ‘fostering false language’, and false literature . At this time of existence of ‘apocalyptic wonderful wonders’, which self-proclaimed artists do not see because they do not want to see, or, even more scary, they are not capable of seeing, they suffer from the’ willful blindness”, as soon as they are concerned with subjects and personalities whose place is on the flea market and not in the arts.

Hence, Leila Samarrai says: My Hell is not here! Her Hell is not shallow, her Hell is deep, the real one, in and around us, called Life Without Mask, Life Without Lies and Lacquers, before which most eyes remain closed, the window shutters down, following us from time indefinite to time indefinite, from the creation of man, regardless whether man is the work of the hands of God, or the work of the hands of the Aliens, or a mutant of the crossing of homo sapiens and asteroid angels.

Ancient artists told us about this Hell. The living waters of their living words, and living themes, also flowed in Dante Alighieri, then in Paul Verlaine, Thomas Elliott There is a real deal of Hell in our Poetess who was tempering, hardening, toughening-up and annealing herself in true Hell, she does not run away from Hell into chants and playful ones Masquerade balls of self-proclaimed artists, followed by the glamour and kitsch.

They are not her company either, because, she was hanging with Euripides, Aristophanes, Ovidius, Sophocles, Dante, Verlaine, Eliott…
The poetess tells us, in the “Second Birth of Tragedy’, through the form of ancient dramas and through the way of singing by modernist “cursed poets”, about us, the diffident sort of beasts. about our Black Eros, about our Scream and Whisper, about Shackled wood, about Astray Course Spheres, our Exchange of poison, about Frozen heights, and for one purpose: For There and Here, for Now, and Never. – In the meaning of biblical ‘self-purification and self-repentance’, because this is the only way to achieve profanity, it has been emphasized for centuries: Love your neighbour as you love yourself.
And finally, the impression remains that Leila’s emergence, the emergence of blossoms at the midden of our new literature, where it doesn’t belong, but there is also the hope that there will be more flowers like this and that they will cover the ugly midden that degrades and destroys our all-around spirituality.

I have to stress that this is the second part of the promotion, there is more, but I think this part is the most representative for my book because I spoke a lot about Boris K. and other topics, too.

“The Adventures of Boris K” is a humorous and satirical story, among other things. In the midst of all the hardship he goes through, he has not forgotten to joke and play. He is a grown man but also a child. Still, it would be unfair to leave Boris K. only and exclusively in ” jaws ” of satire. The Phenomenon Republic may be an ideal state, but it must have its own Sewer opposition. These above are no better than the ones below, but, equally sadly, the lower alternative is also no better than the flappy opposition. Looks like Boris K. will see the writings’ on the wall whether he is at the top or he is down and it is not just him. The Republic is a totally totalitarian system where the opposition does not represent any kind of spiritual reprieve.

On the contrary. Boris K. does not suffer from belonging to literal ideologies. He simply wants to survive. That’s why BK chose communism because it doesn’t like injustice. Communism is in practice full of injustice, but Boris K. does not enslave to ideologies. He is a man who would like to survive, and with whom some gods play with and place him in the most atypical situations. He is, in general, a revolutionary. Alone against everyone, from story to story, lonely but not classic, not like Clint Eastwood in spaghetti westerns. The first association with Boris K. is Joseph K. There are similarities between them, not only in the first letter of the surname! First of all, Boris K., like Kafka’s Joseph K., is actually in the midst of a “process.” The case of Joseph K. is a kind of quasi-judicial process, in the case of Boris K. about the process of so-called “phenomenization,” which is actually another name for all of us (in the countries where it was implemented) well known “transition”. The transition process is similar to the one in which Joseph K. found himself.- both of them are “adorned” by similar lawlessness and disrespect for the legal procedure, basically the defendants’ non-existent guilt, but also by the similar outcome of the process: at the end of the transition process (“phenomenization”) we see Boris K. broken, robbed, without beaten bell, bent over and reduced, to such an extent that he managed to fit a bottle of vodka in his landlady’s drawer, Froulline Suzi. But that’s the basic difference between Joseph and Boris K. – the Boris K. saga begins where the saga of Joseph K. ends, therefore, at the end of the process. Namely, in the first story in this collection of stories about Boris K.’s trials, tribulation”, the story of “Vodka”, we find him defeated by debt bondage enslaved in a bottle of vodka, condemned by the Transition Court, the so-called the “invisible hands” of the market, which grinds and crashes into bottles of alcoholic hopelessness all those who cannot adjust a cruel capitalist game called “The Dictatorship of Money” in which people and their happiness are completely irrelevant because only money matters.

(That is exactly how it is portrayed in the story “Boris K. In The Gambling Den”, in a plastic way, which explicitly states:

“Here in this casino, we do things a bit differently. You are not in control of the money, but rather the money controls you. Your bets are not your own. In fact, the currency bets on you. Follow me? Follow me…” Ovde ne igraju ljudi u pare, već pare u ljude.” (srp.)

On the other hand, “The Adventures of Boris K” can also be read in the pop art key. Boris K. is the art hero of an animated cartoon for intelligent, adult people. Not being the winner of situations like the other Dylan Dog-type superheroes but a victim of transition. The connection between him and Dylan is that both are facing impossible tasks. The world in which Boris resides is no less horror than the world of ghosts and demons that Dylan Dog clashes with. With this being an emphasis on totalitarianism. To the horror of the bureaucracy. It is most similar to Asterix. In the episode when Asterix and Obelisk overcome all difficulties and duels, but when they are sent to a Roman municipality for documents, they go crazy because they realize that they have to go through 100 counters to complete the paperwork.

So they go on foot to the sixth floor, so it turns out that they have to go downstairs again because of one seal and then again on the sixth floor. It is similar to Calimero. Given how often the victim is, he is also somewhat Mr.Bean in terms of indiscretion. In any case, the reader can choose in which key they will read “The Adventures of Boris K.” because variety is the main determinant of the book. For fans of epic fantasy, on the menu are the adventures of Boris K. in the fight with witch Hurricane and Grandma Valentina (stories: “Boris K. and the Witch Hurricane”, “Boris K. and the Mirror”), for fans of pop art there are adventures similar to the story “Boris K. and Chuck Norris,” “Boris K. and Smooth Criminal.” In any case, the reader will follow Boris K. “Serbian Chaplin”, SF traveler through space and time, in a Kafkaian atmosphere, with a healthy, childlike, throaty laugh, forgotten in childhood while reading our first favorite books, although it is essentially a very gloomy topic, on that I reckon I was able to open doors of laughter to readers, because today is the hardest thing to make people laugh to tears.

A review of the short story ‘The Bitch’THE POETRY Leila Samarrai is an exceptional poetess. Hence why the lyricism is so excellent in her works. Consciously or not, whatever the case might be, ultimately it is irrelevant, the verses flow from her sleeves, fingertips, quill, making up a powerful waterfall of verses which floods us readers, therefore we, occasionally, while disappearing into the colors and verses of Samarrai, get the impression that we are reading a poem, a poem that akin to sound (of whistling) gets stuck in one’s throat.THE PLAYS I have had the honor of reading Samarrai’s plays. Perhaps some would call me subjective on this, but her plays are equally as good as her poetry. What’s more, Samarrai’s poetry and plays often are intertwined, making up an antique literary fatherland. Samarrai’s erudition mixed with imagination creates and destroys worlds and universes, leading us through epochs and vast spaces as if in a dream, or rather, in a moment. Is ‘The Bitch’ a type of play? Very much so. This story yearns for an adaptation, and it might happen if an open and ingenious enough person reads it and feels its bark or voice as an invitation for casting of a role of roles.THE FARCE Speaking of playwrights, farce is the one thing that must not be avoided in Samarrai’s works. However you identify with her protagonists of either sex, with their realistic – and in a way our own, too – basic and easily recognizable problems, we are left with the other side of Janus’ face, partly smiling, partly grim. It is enjoyable to wander around the light and darkness of Leila Samarrai. Her humor can also be quite vocal, with many a hahaha within, and it can also, in the blink of an eye, turn itself into a very sharp and even shredding satire of human and less-so characters. Samarrai is what Branislav Nušić could have been had he ever wanted to dabble in horror.THE ABSURDITY Mentioning Samarrai’s works, and glossing over the absurdist tinge of it, would religiously speaking be blasphemous. Even though it seems easy to write of absurdist literature or to write absurdist literature itself, I would disagree that everyone can do it with a little bit of imagination packed into the zeitgeist. Samarrai’s absurdist tendencies are not there for absurdity’s sake, nor does it adorn itself with it, spraying it all over the letters, nor amateurishly summon it like the Dodolas summon the rain. The absurdity is there, it materializes on its own, popping out of the situation, has a face and form of engaged literature, it is strong and loud, it chides and accuses, it awakens and sobers…COURAGE Leila Samarrai is without a doubt a courageous person. I will not go into the minutiae nor explain why I think so. It will be enough for you to take one of her works, read it from start to finish, and it will all be clear. Without literary courage, there is no literary quality, or rather, it remains unfinished and silent, which in literature is a death worse than death.METEMPSYCHOSES AND METAMORPHOSES IN ‘THE BITCH’ All of these characters might in a Borgesian, Alephian way, all be one. Peter is Ana and is Pipi and Fifi, and…The whole work itself. And not just him, but each of them separately. Dismantling, rearranging and transforming of characters is in particular a great treat of this all-encompassing work. For instance, Pipi is 2×3.14! An amazing solution out of which Pipi becomes Lazarus who is raised back from the dead. Also, the amazing ‘woof woof’ ending, with its greeting or saying goodbye, stultifies any character division to humans and animals, men and women, protagonists and antagonists. A top notch work of fiction alongside which you grow and learn.https://www.limundo.com/…/I-lud-i-zbunjen-aforizmi…/54762727

Review, Nataša Mačukat, professor of German language and literature
Upon reading ‘The Adventures of Boris K.’ my first impression was – a novel came out fit for its time of publication, in an ocean of new well-renowned works of fiction, completely anachronistic, more often than not imitating the romantic form and expression. A novel that discovered new in a completely natural manner, without the forced and assembly-line experimenting, in an age where ‘nobody believes in the virginal literatures anymore’, it simply materialized itself out of the spirit of the 21st century.
Other than alluding to Kafka in its very title, ‘The Adventures of Boris K.’ can remind the reader of E.T.A. Hoffmann , the German romantic author who was at least two centuries ahead of his time, with its elements of fantasy and the bizarre, or of Gustav Meyrink with its specific type of horror. In a broader thematic context the novel takes place in a setting where literature has long stopped being Arcadian due to being overladen with historicity and had also long and in the widest range possible started to deal with the relationship of the individual with society – in Central Europe.
The subject matter of the novel is Serbia in her transitional age, without mentioning this specifically, but can be understood in a far broader context. Obviously a work of satire, but avoiding that which satire has become today – institutionalized, watered down, overly present, and cynically and arrogantly used by those whom it should by definition be targeting, because they cannot be touched, and it creates the illusion of democracy.
Boris K. is represented best as a video game character – without much character he goes to different ‘missions.’ With his facelessness, one moment overly and nigh-drunkenly involved and another barely mildly so, adding the bizarre nature of the missions, he describes all of us people of today – forced to adapt to various roles with the purpose of maintaining an existence, most assuredly losing our way and accepting worthless roles and habits, we lose our essential self.